She ducked behind a piece of debris, the swishing and pittering and swooshing and pattering of bullets her only friends. Her comrades had all perished under the assault of the newest weapon, the Guttermen, airdropped into the trenches the way bombs used to be. Their attacks were just as damaging, but nothing could be done to stop them from moving to another spot and continue the slaughter. Between her and that very convenient one-time-use electronics disabler was one of them, the metal beast. The final hope to hopefully secure this patch of land from the Russian.
A small whirr knocked her out of her musing. Well, more the poke she received, really. She looked at her left hand, which was squishing her cheek. It moved away, then formed a thumb up. With a soft giggle, she nodded. She wasn’t truly alone. Her... Her sister was there with her.
She risked a peek at the automaton, its shield was sturdy, the multi barrel, rapid fire electric gun was infallible, and no matter how hard they shot it, the thing’s hull wouldn’t budge. The only thing they had yet to do was charge up close and give it a quick sock.
She took a deep breath.
Her sister clenched her fist.
“I... don’t know ab- ow.”
With an exasperated facepalm, the younger one of them switched with her pacifistic older sister.
She bursted out from her cover, pushing herself as fast as her very fragile, very human legs could bring her. The hulking chunk of scrap, of course, noticed her, but its bulk also meant that mobility wasn’t one of its strengths. She easily avoided the barrage of near light speed projectiles, closing onto the thing. She reeled her arm back as the distance between the two shortened, and when she was within five meters of the thing, it also reeled the arm holding its shield back. The girl smirked, and met the Gutterman midway. A deafening sound of crumbling metal exploded throughout the frontlines. Her ears hurt nearly as much as her shoulder, her oh so flimsy, fleshy shoulder. She gritted her teeth, and activated the pressurized air blast function on her knuckle. She was going deaf with this one.
The shield broke with the combined effort of her stab and blast combo. Her smirk returned as she clicked the button to pump her heat shotgun once, twice, thrice, and a final time to overheat the core. She switched arms, because her sister wouldn’t appreciate having another one of her attached on her other shoulder, and fired. The explosion ripped the outer shell of the belly region apart (the softest part of the thing, to allow for better air control), revealing the mechanisms below, and damaged her human parts a little more for good measure. She threw the still hot shotgun to her right, shoved her mechanical hand inside the hole, and activated the blast again, obliterating any and all circuitries, pipes and pumps in the region.
With an almost organic grunt, the Gutterman limped and began falling over... right on top of her.
“Oh shit.”
The multi-ton beast was going to crush her and her sister, and she wouldn’t be able to rip her hand out in time. For the first time in nearly her entire existence, she panicked. She shut her eyes and shielded herself with her other, organic arm, despite knowing the futility of her actions.
The awaited pain never came.
She cracked open one eye to see the entire thing had just... vanished. In her shock and with ears ringing, she was literally scared out of her skin when the earth shook as the metal corpse slammed into the ground to her left, causing her to switch with her sister again.
She collapsed into a heap on the ground, hissing from the pain along the way. Everything hurted, her skin hurted from the burns, her insides a mess from the shockwaves, and her eardrums probably broken.
“Ow... Wait... I’m not dead?”
The younger sister put her hand on her hip, the two seemingly, or more probably actually having an internal conversation. After a while, the older sister sighed.
“Magra...” At her pleading tone (not that they heard it, ruptured eardrums and all), Magra put her forearm under her chest, like she was pouting.
“Ugh... can you at least do the sparkly sparklo whoosh whoosh healy wheely thingy?”
Still in that pose, Magra swished her index finger, making her entire arm, normally obsidian black, lit up with a purple light like amethyst in the sun. The light traveled up her arm, and through their connection on their left shoulder, flowed into the body of her sister. For a while, they sat there, relishing in the warm feeling of the healing light. But their peace didn’t last, as the sound of another one of those air raids registered in their newly regenerated eardrum. With a huff, she pushed herself up and said into the air.
“It just wasn’t meant to be.”
They picked up the surprisingly intact shotgun lying under their feet and left for base camp to report, as Magra’s hand clenched even tighter than normal.
There were no circuitries.
The pipes in the Guttermen weren't for oil, fuel, nor coolant.
They were for blood.
Like hers.
And the British’s own version of the Gutterman.
MAGEH-2910, or known to her sister as Maggie, was the sole survivor of the SCEI (pronounced essei), Sanguineous Cybernetically Enhanced Initiative. She was an orphan, left on the doorstep of a suburban house, as all war orphans did, somewhere in the Southwest region. Her first four years of life were filled with abuse from the family whose veranda was grace with her presence. She fled from that house on her fourth birthday (as informed on the letter in her basket when she was found), and lived on the streets for nearly a year, losing her arm some time during the eleven months. She was then kidnapped by the institute behind SCEI, and was genetically modified to produce more blood as one of the tens of thousands of experiments to create a human that could withstand the most recent prosthetic breakthrough. There were two branches of research, and Maggie was lucky she was kidnapped when she was, into the Mechanically And Genetically Enhanced Humans branch, the only thing the SCEI was researching back then. Her batch was the first and last one to use cybernetics that runs on blood, and her survival prompted the creation of the much more sinister division, Blood Fueled Automata. The reason being the existence of her sister, MGRA, or Magra.
Magra first woke up just barely in time before the last hour of Maggie’s birthday passed, and immediately tried to escape her placement on her shoulder. Somehow, Maggie managed to calm her down enough so that they could communicate properly. The scientists at SCEI thought she was just a split personality, developed to handle the stress associated with the Mechanical Ground Remover Arm, until they administered anesthetic and the arm still moved around. They quickly discovered the cause for this interesting phenomenon, and it was because of the blood.
Blood, from where all life originated, the nectar from the Tree of Life, the fuel for all creations. It gave life to flesh, so why couldn’t it give life to metal?
That was when Muggle Britain discovered Blood Magic.
“If that’s all, you are dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maggie left the tent of the middle aged Sargeant, noting how his gaze sometimes strayed toward her left arm from time to time. During those distracted moments, she could see the pity in his eyes, deeply hidden beneath his stern stare. Poor girl, she wouldn’t have been deployed so young if not for that arm, was what could have been passing through his mind.
Indeed, she was first on the battlefield when she was seven years of age. Now, after eight winters she had been a Corporal for nearly a year.
She returned to her team’s tent, it would never see the warmth it once housed again. Finally, the emotional package she had held on for the last two days exploded. She cried for the could-have-beens, wept for the future that was severed, wilting, she mourned the soldiers under her command, so young, a little older than her, but still so full of potential.
Magra whirred comfortingly at her sister. She wasn’t as close to the Privates, but she knew her sister saw them sometimes as little siblings to be protected, sometimes as people she could lean on to cry. The team was a family, but now, all that remained was a shattered girl and the graves of her brothers and sisters.
With a final sob, she wiped the tears away, and set on to write a letter to each of their families, they deserve to know.
The day passed.
Maggie stood outside of the post office, tired from the emotional discharge, her hands holding a rough envelope addressed to her sister. She took off to her tent, her way too big, way too cold tent, almost on autopilot. It was empty. Hollow. The beds were neatly made, yet absent of any personal artifacts. She sat on her own bed, deciding to read the letter to distract herself from the hole in her heart.
Ms Magra Magnese
Third bed from the back on the right
Tent 5
Camp Anatase
Kent
